About Me

Stephon Parker - Reliability Engineering & Systems Operations Leader

Hello! My name is Stephon Parker, a leader who’s extremely passionate and driven about developing operationally mature systems. My background in security engineering, systems administration, and devops has helped me to to develop a unique perspective in my approach to the field of site reliability engineering.

Skills and Expertise

I excel in developing both tooling and processes to ensure the reliability of developed systems. My proficient skill set includes Python, C#, Bash/Shell Scripting, Terraform, AWS, and frameworks such as Site Reliability Engineering durable engineering and toil reduction. My developing or emerging skill set focus on technologies such as Node.js, TypeScript, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Amazon SageMaker.

Problem-Solving

Challenges presented are unique to the situation and deserve to approached as such regardless of previous experiences. My experience has been that the problem itself is usually not the where problem solvers spend the bulk of their energy. Instead we are expending energy resolving the people side of problem solving before or while we’re solving the technology problem. Compassion based, user-centric problem solving is an approach that puts the user at the center of the issue I’m approaching making it easier to keep them at the heart of the work.

Influences

Given the roles and experience I’ve gained working in the infrastructure operations space, I’ve developed a unique perspective on my approach to technology. I have now work with nonprofits and small businesses (under 50 employees) to create an environment where employees feel empowered instead of fearful of technology as it develops. Some resources that continue to shape my views on engaging with technology are The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook, and Accelerate.

Continuous Learning

As the tech industry quickly evolves almost day to day it’s nearly a full time job to keep up. In order to keep up with learning I have shifted my focus to what I’d like to call Journey/Problem Based Learning. This ensures that rather than just learning random technologies, I learn what is needed to solve the problem in front of me resulting in a cross functional learning style.

Leadership Philosophy

My personal philosophy is to lead teams or individuals to leave the spaces we exist in better than how we found them by contributing to the well-being of others. I believe that leadership is not exclusive to a position, but is a lifestyle.